Hunters Hints By Hunter Boucher, Director of Operations, LandlordBC In December of 2018 the Rental Housing Task Force presented a final report of their in-depth investigation of the rental housing industry. This investigation included significant consultation with landlords and tenants through in-person community forums, written submissions and online discussion. The report, titled Recommendations and Findings primarily focused on 23 recommendations, all with the aim to help modernize the Residential Tenancy Act (RTA) and overall rental housing industry. While the report came out in December of 2018, most of the recommendations are yet to be acted on; this is in part due to the sheer amount of policy work needed to bring these recommendations to life. There are a few recommendations for other pieces of legislation but, most are aimed at the RTA and Residential Tenancy Branch (RTB). The RTB has begun the necessary research and policy work to bring these recommendations to life and we will likely see several years of changes as this work is completed. In this Hunters Hints I will review some of the task force’s recommendations and where they are at. Recommendation 1: Stop renovictions.
Recommendations 5: Strengthen enforcement of the law, including implementing a clear process for making, investigating and reporting administrative penalty complaints. This recommendation addresses the concern many have over how problematic landlords and tenants who repeatedly are found to be non-compliant with the RTA and Residential Tenancy Regulations. The RTB has long had a process to address repeat offenders through administrative penalties though these powers were limited and seldom used. Beginning in 2017 we have seen a strengthening of legislation and the creation of the RTB’s Compliance and Enforcement Unit. The Compliance and Enforcement Unit has a mandate to investigate significant and repeated infractions of the RTA and its regulations and where possible bring the offending parties into compliance. In situations where a landlord or tenant does not come into compliance the Compliance and Enforcement Unit can and has issued administrative penalties. This unit also has the ability to publish its decisions when it feels it may be necessary, and we expect to see several published in the coming months.
This first recommendation is meant to address the concerns many tenants have regarding landlords ending tenancies to allow for repairs or renovations. The recommendation states that the RTB should monitor the situation as we have already seen many changes to this Notice to End Tenancy. There is direction to take further action if the changes already implemented are not successful in curbing misuse of this Notice to End Tenancy. To review, the changes to this Notice to End Tenancy includes an increase to the penalty for bad faith from two months rent compensation to 12 months rent compensation. Additionally, the notice period has changed from two months to four months, which also increased the amount of time a tenant has to dispute the notice to 30 days from the date the notice is received. LandlordBC members have access to extensive guides on the two and four month Notices to End Tenancy in the members only section of the LandlordBC website.
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